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Monday, 22 August 2016

Tom Blenkinsop's vitriolic Twitter tantrum

The Labour MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland Tom Blenkinsop has been having a quite extraordinary cry-bully tantrum on Twitter.Months of anti-Corbyn drivel

Ever since the inept Anyone But Corbyn coup was launched Tom Blenkinsop's Twitter feed has been absolute abomination, with dozens and dozens of tweets attacking the Labour Party leadership and party members, and barely anything criticising the Tories, but over the weekend before ballot papers for the Labour leadership election were sent out he went into complete-meltdown mode.

Here's an example of Blenkinsop's anti-Corbyn drivel before his complete meltdown: "Corbyn is more wooden than a wooden spoon sitting in the wooden draw of a wooden kitchen...in the woods". The guy obviously thinks he's got some kind of searing rapier wit, but before his meltdown it was just cringeworthy babbling like that, retweeting hatchet-job articles from the likes of hard-right blogger and Murdoch stooge Guido Fawkes and repeatedly calling for Stalinist style purges of the Labour Party.

Something snapped

Over the weekend before the ballot papers were sent out something clearly snapped in Blenkinsop. He went from cringeworthy anti-Corbyn chuntering and calling for a Stalinist style purge of the Labour Party to rid it of all Corbyn supporters to repeatedly yelling "entryist" and "idiot" at anyone who dared question his ridiculous behaviour.

Calling for a purge of left-wing Labour Party members is bad enough, but repeatedly yelling "entryist" at anyone who dared question his attitude (including someone who clearly identified as a lifelong Labour voter) is sickening.StalinismBlenkinsop followed up his bizarre calls for a Stalinist style Labour Party purge with an even more explicit call for a purge of anyone who booed Sadiq Khan's divisive attack on Jeremy Corbyn (just a few weeks after Khan had vowed to stay neutral in the Labour leadership election).

The most ridiculous thing of all is that after repeatedly calling for an ideological purge of the Labour Party, he then had the absolute gall to retweet someone who was chuntering on about Jeremy Corbyn supporters being a bunch of Stalinists.

One of the interesting things that arises from Blenkinsop's repeated calls for an anti-democratic purge of the Labour Party is that he clearly won't have a leg to stand on if Corbyn defeats the coup-plotters then decides to do the sensible thing and allow democratic re-selection of appallingly divisive and self-serving Labour MPs.

It would obviously take a very brazen individual to object to democratic re-selection of MPs after calling for an anti-democratic purge of Labour Party left-wingers, but judging by the constant stream of divisiveness and abuse that passes for his Twitter feed, it's beyond doubt that Blenkinsop is capable of such brazenness.

Owen Jones is not an idiot

The fact that Blenkinsop calls Owen Jones an "idiot" is indicative of the guy's mentality. He's using a public platform to hurl abuse and insults at members of his own party, he writes dozens of anti-Corbyn tweets for every one he writes criticising the Tory government, and he's repeatedly called for a Stalinist style purge of the Labour Party, then his response to someone criticising his attitude is to call them an "idiot".

Personal abuse is pretty the lowest possible level of debate, and Blenkinsop's Twitter tantrum is a perfect illustration of the fact that he's a political gutter-dweller.

Cry-bully tacticsBlenkinsop is clearly utilising the cry-bully tactic. The objective of which is to repeatedly insult and abuse people to the point that they respond in kind with abuse and insults of their own, then cry about the terrible abuse you're suffering. We've seen it already from the ex-Guardian hack Alex Andreou in his Acid Attack article on Jeremy Corbyn and anyone who supports him, and now we've got a classic example of an actual Labour MP using the same dirty underhand tactics.This guy is supposed to be an intellectual!

One of the strangest things about Blenkinsop is that he's apparently got a degree in PPE and a Masters in Continental Philosophy from Warwick university, but on Twitter he comes across as having the debating skills of a petulant child having a tantrum.

Perhaps the philosophy department at Warwick University taught him that the ideal way to structure an argument is to repeatedly hurl insults at your opponents and then accuse them of things that you yourself are arguing for?

Blenkinsop is clearly acting as a very poor advert for the post graduate philosophy department Warwick University. If an abuse-hurling intellectual lightwieght like Tom Blenkinsop is the calibre of person they churn out, then what value do their qualifications actually hold?Blenkinsop's echo chamber

I first became aware of Blenkinsop's Twitter tantrum when someone posted a screenshot of one of his comments on the Another Angry Voice Facebook page, but when I went to check out whether such a ludicrously divisive comment could be real I discovered that he's blocked me, which is odd because I've never had any interaction with him on Twitter whatever.

There are only two reasons to use the Twitter block button. One is to stop people hurling abuse at you and the other is to create a closed ideology echo chamber where all views that contradict your own are silenced. Given that an awful lot of people who are blocked by Tom Blenkinsop have never even interacted with him, it's absolutely obvious what he's been doing.

I'm definitely going to consider the fact that I've been blocked by Tom Blenkinsop despite never having interacted with him as a badge of honour.

Worse than Britain First

The extreme-right hate group Britain First operate a similar kind of closed ideology echo chamber to Tom Blenkinsop, but with one crucial difference. They wait for people to actually leave dissenting comments before they hit the block button, they don't just go around randomly blocking anyone who might challenge their precious closed ideology.

It's incredibly sad that there's a Labour MP out there with an even more censorious attitude than the fascist britain First hatemongers.

Bringing the Labour Party into disrepute

Labour Party politicians like Sadiq Khan and Kezia Dugdale have every right to back whichever candidate they prefer (even though their stated reasons are laughable), but what the likes of Tom Blenkinsop and Ian Austin are doing with their divisive Twitter hate campaigns is completely unacceptable.

Any other party would have launched disciplinary proceedings against such divisive and vitriolic abuse aimed at fellow party politicians and members. Could you imagine Theresa May standing for a Tory MP who has taken it upon themselves to wage a one-man Twitter war against her, her cabinet and a significant percentage of the party membership? Of course she wouldn't.

Once the leadership election is over, I'd be amazed if muck-hurling Labour MPs like Tom Blenkinsop aren't at least put up for re-selection by their constituents, which seems to be a fair guess at why he's having such a tantrum. He can see that his toys are going to be confiscated because of his bad behaviour, and he's having a screaming tantrum about it.

Sadly for Tom, he doesn't even seem to realise that resorting to screaming tantrums rarely ever result in sensible adults changing their minds.

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